Use Freemind Mind-Mapping Software to Keep Up with New Year Resolutions

When my old computer got fried in a power surge, I lost a lot of software, including my Inspiration 6 program. This has been a tight budget year for me; just as it has been for a lot of other people. Here is a bit of good news for those of us who love to use our computer to organize...well, just about everything.

Freemind is an open-source bit of freeware that can help keep those scattered thoughts (and habits) under control. It functions much the same way as Inspiration; perhaps not quite as intuitively, but for the price it works just fine. It can be used for brainstorming, creating flow charts or just thinking with your fingertips.

At my age, I've made and failed at so many resolutions, I don't really make them anymore. However, I do review my year and try to map a few improving directions. This isn't quite the same thing as a resolution; for me, it is far more effective and far less likely to have an emotional rebound.

I'm not quite old enough to retire; but I'm certainly old enough to be thinking about it. (Actually, you should be thinking about it as soon as you begin supporting yourself. However, in those days I was more mindful of getting my children fed, educated, and safely raised to being adults.) I've spoken this year with my children about estate planning. Its not like I have a lot, but, as I told them, if they fight over my tawdry bits of material wealth, I will come back and hurt them. My oldest sagely said, "Write it all down, Mom." Good advice for sure, but not as easily achieved as one might hope.

So I got out my copy of Freemind and started with a new plan for the rest of my life--and after.

I'm a champion procrastinator, and I love to make lists. I can spend all day making lists of the things I need to do and never get started on any of them. My thinking is pretty scattered, so I find myself adding, shifting and sorting those lists; a process that can get pretty messy, and lead to a lot of recopying when done on paper. I've tried using Word files; I've tried using spreadsheets. But when it comes right down to it, I'm a scatter burst thinker; linear files don't cut it. Programs such as Freemind or Inspiration cater to my add/subtract/connect style of planning. Better than that, since it is done on computer, I don't create sheets of paper, notebooks or sticky-notes that I can lose.

The program was working so well for me, I began to do daily and weekly flow charts of my activity. Cleaning seems a little less hopeless when I have a nice record of how many times I've washed dishes, swept floors, and cleaned up after pets in a week.

Oh, yeah...that bit about electronic files getting zapped? Well, there's an answer for that, too. When I bought my new computer (after the power surge), I also purchased a My Book external hard drive. Four hundred Sixty-five Gigabytes of detachable storage means plenty of room to back-up my files and even save a program or two. This is good, because one of the things I miss about Inspiration is that it would save flow charts as an html web page. Free Mind will only save as an .mm file. It works, but it doesn't have quite everything.

If you are interested in trying Freemind for yourself, the program may be downloaded from http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Download .